Ace grinned as the last of his crew mates settled into the large room they had jokingly labelled as 'the plotting room'. It had been a couple of weeks since the spades had reformed, and a few days since they had infiltrated several of the nearby marine bases.

And so far, everything had been going according to plan, which is why it was time to move onto the next step "Ok, now that everyone's here it's time to get started with part two of our plan! First of all, though good job to everyone who helped with the marine base infiltrations."

There were a few hoots and laughs before the crew settled into silence once more "Now as you know, the marines are currently offering a substantial reward for anyone with information on the notorious Spade! Not only that but I've heard several information brokers are also looking for the same info, so we're going to spread some confusion."

The Shark like grin on Ace's face, was mirrored perfectly by his crew "First of all Alice," Ace pointed to the only female member of his crew "have you had any contact with the marines since you turned pirate, and would anyone from your home town expect you to turn pirate?"

The petite female shipwright snorted "I've had no contact with the marines Captain, and there's certainly no one back home who would expect me to go pirate. Hell, I didn't expect me to go pirate before you saved me from those slaver bastards."

Ace gave a slightly grim nod at the reminder of what he'd saved his female crew mate from, but continued on none the less "Excellent, then our next plan of action is for you to go to the marines and tell them all about the beautiful blond woman with the spade tattoo you saw wondering around the local marine base."

There was momentary silence as the pirates stared at their captain in incomprehension, before bursting into laughter "A beautiful woman with a spade tattoo? you really think they're going to buy that Captain?"

Ace shot a smug grin at his sniper Deuce "I don't think they're going to buy it, I know they will. What the marines don't like to advertise is the fact that they can't actually be everywhere at once, meaning a lot of their Intel actually comes from civilians. So the process for gathering Intel is that they check what island the Intel gatherer is from as well as if they have any possible ties to piracy."

"Seeing as dear Alice here has had no previous association with any pirates, and given that her current pirate associates have no bounties yet, it means that on the surface Alice looks like a pretty reliable Intel gatherer. So it should look like her only ulterior motive for revealing such information is to claim the reward money."

Alice gave an enthusiastic nod "Gotcha Captain." Ace grinned "Excellent, just in case of trouble Gray can go with you as back up, if anyone asks, you're dating and that's why he's with you." Ace couldn't help but smile at the chorus of laughter and wolf whistles the statement brought (in the original timeline it had taken over two years for the two to realise they liked each other, hopefully this would help speed up the process a little bit.) Still smiling Ace turned his attention towards his chef Small.

"In the meantime, Small, I want you to get disguised and go to the shadiest back alley bar you can find and have a couple of drinks before boasting as loudly as possible about your beautiful Captain Lady Spade and how she faked her death from the marines."

"There's likely to be at least one information gatherer in there so the news should spread pretty quickly and hopefully it'll get back to the marines at some point and lend credit to Alice's information."

The laughter got louder as Ace grinned "Other than that, Small I want you to keep an ear out for any word of the guy we talked about earlier. Otherwise feel free to make up as many details as you want, let's lead the marines on a wild goose chase! We need to stay under the radar till we hit the grandline but after that we'll be in the clear!"

Amongst the cheers and hoots Ace's newest recruit Paddy timidly raised his hand "I get not wanting to make the journey harder on ourselves Captain, but why are we hiding who we are in the first place?" Ace's grin turned into a slight grimace as he repeated the cover story he'd come up with some weeks prior.

"That's right, you, Gray and Alice weren't there for that conversation... To make a long story short my Gramps is a high ranking marine and if he finds out I've gone pirate he might try and stop us, so I figure it's best to wait until we get into the grandline before my face is revealed."

It wasn't the truth, but Ace couldn't exactly say he needed time to get stronger to help save his future family, that would just make him sound crazy, or crazier anyway. Besides his reasoning gave him a plausible enough excuse for the extra training sessions he was forcing his crew to undertake.

Sure enough Alice and Gray nodded in easy acceptance whilst Paddy paled slightly "When you say high ranking Marine, how high ranking are we talking about here Captain?" Ace gave a small shrug, vaguely amused at how the older crew members were watching the newer ones with sadistic glee shining through their eyes.

"He's a Vice Admiral." Paddy face planted "Of course he's a fucking vice admiral, of fucking course. why did I expect anything different?!" Deuce snorted in amusement, drawing a weak glare from the newcomer "That's not even the worst part, ask the Captain which vice Admiral."

Paddy turned to face his Captain, a pleading expression in place "Do I even want to know?" Ace shook his head cheerfully "Probably not. But if I don't tell you now, one of the other numbskulls will most definitely blurt it out at the most inconvenient time possible."

Paddy let out a small whimper of resigned acceptance before nodding his head resolutely "Ok Captain, lay it on me." Ace's grin widened to shark like proportions he was having way too much fun with this but oh well "Garp." Paddy froze, looking at the rest of the crew for confirmation "Garp the hero? That Garp?"

Ace nodded "That's the one." Paddy buried his face in his hands as if trying to block out reality "Captain I want you to know that while I think that you're an amazing person, and I'd probably follow you to the ends of the earth. You're absolutely batshit insane."

Dusty let out a wry chuckle "You're only just realising this now?" Ace swatted the back of his first mate's head "Is that insubordination I hear?" The innocent smile he got back in return was incredibly unconvincing "Of course not Captain."

Giving a light snort of disbelief Ace gestured to Alice, Gray and Small "Anyway meeting adjourned for now, we'll discuss the rest after you three get back, so go on ahead. In the meantime..."

A small shudder ran through the remaining Spade pirates at the sight of their Captain's gleeful expression "It's training time."

A few meters away from the ship Alice, Gray and Small let out a small sigh of combined relief at the missed training session. "We better get some more bandages while we're out, Doc was complaining about us running low after the last 'training session' the captain put us through."

Small snorted "You can say that again. Mind you it's not like we can say the training's not necessary, and it'll certainly make getting through the grandline easier when we get to it." The three pirates gave a nod of agreement, unanimously deciding to ignore the screams of pain coming from their crewmates left on the ship.

Giving one last shit eating grin to his two companions, Small turned towards the seedier section of the town "You two have fun on your date!"

Ignoring their retaliatory remarks Small scurried off to go find a bar, a large grin on his face, the Captain had given him complete and utter freedom with Lady Spades fake backstory. It was time to spread some madness.

.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.

Garp's left eye twitched as he stared down at the latest information on the woman now commonly referred to as Lady Spade. That fucking Brat. There was no way in hell that his grandson wasn't the one responsible for this mess, not after this latest stunt.

It had taken four days for the rumour that Spade was a beautiful blonde woman to spread throughout the blues, and by that time the culprit had struck again. This time several marine bases had been spray painted with an elegant looking spade, in the same vibrant orange shade as Ace's hat.

Not only that, but every marine base hit with a spade was also missing all of it's food stock along with certain medical supplies. But the worst part was that Spade had once more made off with stolen information, and sent it to be published.

This time it was mission reports denoting some of the more humiliating failures of the Marines of east blue. And honestly after reading through some of said reports Garp really couldn't blame anyone for thinking the marines were somewhat incompetent.

How one of the lieutenants had managed to let an entire group of pirates slip past him, after being distracted by their first mate in a dress stuffed with melons, was just plain embarrassing. And that wasn't even the worst of it.

But even though he was still sure his Grandson was behind these attacks, the old Marine was still at a loss as to why. The pranks may have been Ace's style, but the brat wasn't one to sit back and let others take credit for his work.

Nor was he the type to follow someone else which was why Garp had his doubts about whether this Spade woman existed in the first place.

Even if recent rumours did claim she was once an infamous pirate. One who faked her own death after her lover was heinously murdered by an ex-marine called Fredward, with something known as a vanishing cabinet.

And don't even get Garp started on the rumour that she was in the midst of a desperately passionate star-crossed relationship with Akainu...

But as he was saying, Garp was thoroughly befuddled by (what he was almost certain was) his grandson's actions. With the way he kept hitting marine bases it was almost as if he was looking for something, the real question was what?

Either way though... Garp's eye twitched once more as he looked down at the sketched version of the woman who had now gained the nickname Lady Spade. When he next saw his Grandson, he was in for some serious Fists of Love.

It was well known that if a photo of a pirate was unable to be provided then a sketch artist would sit down with whoever could offer information about the pirate and the image created would go on their bounty poster.

Garp just knew his brat of a grandson was behind this. Hell, Ace probably walked up to the marines himself and gave the description. A description which could essentially be summed up as 'the blonde female love child of Garp and Dandan with a spade tattoo on their cheek' the utter Brat.

How the hell did that image match up with the earlier descriptions of 'a beautiful blonde lady' this was Ace's fault. He just knew it.

Authors note

So I couldn't resist. I really really couldn't resist, my idea for the supposed Lady Spades appearance just popped into my head while I was finishing up the chapter and it wouldn't go away. Sorry Garp. Anyway to answer the question asked by both Freddo Fraud and GolDEin13 I am not planning on making this a romance story, and even if I add romance later its gonna be relegated to the background. thanks to Nachuu for mentioning Ace's first mate is actually masked Duece, due to the fact I don't know how to edit stuff i'll probably be leaving as Dusty as first mate, hope no one minds. Thanks to everyone else for the nice reviews and I hope you're enjoying the story so far!

Akainu's troubles are just beginning *evil smile*